Collection Summary
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Harris, Wilson, 1921-2018
Wilson Harris Collection
1960-1997
Manuscript Collection MS-01848
11 document boxes, 1 oversize box (4.62 linear feet)
The Wilson Harris collection includes
handwritten manuscripts, typescripts, page proofs, and reviews for several of his books, as
well as correspondence.
English
Biographical Sketch
(Theodore) Wilson Harris was born on March 24, 1921, in New Amsterdam, British Guiana (now
Guyana), the son of Theodore Wilson and Millicent Josephine Glasford Harris. His mixed
ancestry included Amerindian, African, and European. When his father died in 1923, Harris
and his mother moved to Georgetown, where his mother remarried. In 1929, his stepfather
disappeared in the Guyana rain forests and was presumed drowned. Harris, his mother, and his
half-sister then moved in with his beloved grandfather, who died in 1937. Harris attended
Queen’s College, also in Georgetown, from 1934 until 1938. He worked as a government
surveyor from 1942 until 1958 and as part of that work led surveying expeditions from the
coastlands into the country’s interior.
Harris married Cecily Carew in 1945; the marriage ended in divorce. Harris emigrated to
England in 1959, and he met and married Scottish writer Margaret Burns that same year. Since
then, he has been a full-time writer, with occasional employment lecturing and teaching
creative writing classes at various universities in the United States and other countries.
Harris and his wife lived in the Holland Park area of London, England, until 1985, when they
moved to the Essex countryside.
Harris’s personal experiences with the complex Guyanese landscape and multi-racial culture
influenced his writing. His novels, known for their abstract and experimental nature, are
full of metaphors and complex symbolism, with an intermingling of time, reality,
imagination, memory, and dreams; they have been called “psychical expeditions.” Harris’s
early works were collections of poetry:
Fetish (1951, under the
pseudonym Kona Waruk), The Well and the Land (1952), and Eternity to a Season (1954). The Sun: Fourteen Poems in a Cycle was published along with prose
sketches in the journal Kyk-over-al in 1955. In 1960,
Faber and Faber published Harris’s first novel, Palace of the Peacock, which used the geography of Guyana as a
metaphor for the landscape of the mind. It was followed by three more novels (The Far Journey of Oudin, 1961; The Whole Armour, 1962; and The Secret Ladder, 1963), making up what Harris calls his "Guyana
Quartet." Heartland, which includes characters from Palace of the Peacock, was published in 1964. Harris is also known
for his Carnival trilogy, consisting of Carnival (1985), The Infinite Rehearsal (1987), and The Four Banks of the River of Space (1990). Harris’s concern with
cross-cultural parallels is evidenced by Black Marsden: A Tabula Rasa
Comedy (1972), which is set in Edinburgh, and its sequel, Companions of the Day and Night (1975), set in Mexico. The Age of the Rainmakers (1971) and The Sleepers of Roraima (1970) are reinterpretations of Amerindian
myths. Resurrection at Sorrow Hill (1993) is set in a mental institution
with patients representing the world’s greatest cultures. In Jonestown (1996), the 1978 Jonestown Massacre is interwoven with the
fall of the Mayan culture. In addition to his novels, short stories, and poetry, Harris also
published essays on colonialism and post-colonialism, as well as studies in literary
criticism, such as Tradition, the Writer and Society: Critical Essays
(1967) and The Womb of Space: The Cross-Cultural Imagination
(1983).
Harris won the Guyana National Prize for Literature in 1987 and 2002, was created a Knight
Bachelor of the United Kingdom in 2010, and won a Lifetime Achievement Prize from the
Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards in 2014. He died on March 8, 2018 in Chelmsford, England.
Sources:
British Council Contemporary Writers in the UK website,
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/ (accessed 16 April 2007).
Contemporary Authors Online, http://www.galegroup.com/ (accessed 23
March 2007)
Contemporary Literary Criticism, http://www.galegroup.com/ (accessed
23 March 2007).
Durix, Jean-Pierre. “Wilson Harris,”
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume
117: Twentieth Century Caribbean and Black African Writers, First Series. Detroit:
Gale Group, 1992.
Maes-Jelinek, Hena.
Dream, Psyche, Genesis: The Works of Wilson
Harris, http://www.ulg.ac.be/facphl/uer/d-german/L3/whlife.html (accessed 4 April
2007).
Maes-Jelinek, Hena, editor.
Wilson Harris: The Uncompromising
Imagination. Sydney, N.S.W.: Dangaroo Press, 1991.
Index Terms
People
Harris, Margaret Rose.
Thorpe, Michael.
Subjects
Authors, Caribbean.
Caribbean fiction (English)
Experimental fiction.
Guyanese fiction.
Document Types
Notebooks.
Scope and Contents
The Wilson Harris collection includes handwritten manuscripts, typescripts, page proofs,
and reviews for several of his books, as well as correspondence, primarily letters written
by Harris to Michael Thorpe. The collection is organized in three series: Series I. Works,
1968-1993, undated; Series II. Reviews, 1960-1990; and Series III. Correspondence,
1978-1997.
The Works series is arranged alphabetically by title. Most works are represented by
handwritten drafts in notebooks, composite typescript and handwritten manuscripts, final
typescripts, and page proofs. Among the works present are
The Age of the Rainmakers (1971), The Angel at the Gate (1982), Ascent to Omai (1970), Black Marsden (1972), Carnival (1985), Companions of the Day and Night
(1975), The Four Banks of the River of Space (1990), The Infinite Rehearsal (1987), Jonestown (1996), Resurrection at Sorrow Hill
(1993), and The Sleepers of Roraima (1970). In addition, there
is a photocopy of the published essay Harris wrote for Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series in 1992. Many of the
manuscripts include Harris’s notes or annotations explaining his creative process, or what
he referred to as the “re-visionary process.” For example, page proofs for Angel at the Gate and Carnival contain his annotations referring to other drafts of those
works. Harris included a photocopy of his article Literacy and the Imagination with Carnival materials since he felt it illumined a strand regarding
inner guide-lines, or intuitive clues.
Series II. Reviews consists of clippings of reviews of works by Harris, as well as a 1960
radio transcript of John Connell’s review of
Palace of the Peacock.
Series III. Correspondence is comprised of Harris’s letters to poet and literary critic
Michael Thorpe; the letters date from 1978 to 1997.
Acquisition:
Purchases, 1970-1998 (R4815, R6832, R12422, R12443, R13879, R14351); Gifts, 1992, 2004
(G9585, G12410)
Access:
Open for research
Processed by:
Katherine Mosley, 2007
Other materials by Wilson Harris in the Ransom Center are located in the Ronald Christ,
Joseph Jones, John Lehmann, and Robert E. McDowell archives. A portrait bust of Harris by
Suzie Jones Sarrett is located in the Center’s Art Collection.
Container List
Series I. Works, 1968-1993, undated
1
The Age of the Rainmakers (1971)
1
1
Handwritten manuscript, in notebook, undated
1
2-3
Composite handwritten and typescript manuscript, 23 and 24 June 1969, 23
July 1969, 6 August 1969, 27 and 29 October 1969, and undated
1
4
Final typescript, typesetting copy, undated
1
5
Page proofs, 1971
1
The Angel at the Gate (1982)
1
6
Handwritten manuscript, in eight notebooks, undated
2
1-3
Handwritten manuscript, in eight notebooks (continued)
2
4
Final typescript, with printer’s marks, undated
2
5
Page proofs, 1982
2
6
Hambone review, photocopy, 1986
2
Ascent to Omai (1970)
2
7
Handwritten manuscript titled “The Ruined Porknocker,” with “Alternative
routes the novel could have taken which were abandoned,” undated. Includes some
revised typescript pages.
3
1-2
Handwritten manuscript (continued)
3
3
Typescript with handwritten revisions, 17 May 1968
3
4-5
Typescript, undated, and carbon typescript, 29 October 1968, both with
corrections. Typescript also includes printer’s marks.
3
6
Corrected page proofs, 1969
3
Black Marsden (1972)
3
7
Handwritten first rough working draft, 4 April 1971
3
8
Handwritten draft pages, in notebook, undated
4
1-2
Handwritten and typescript manuscript, undated
4
3
Final typescript, with printer’s marks, undated
4
4
Corrected page proofs, 1972
4
5
Journal of Commonwealth Literature review,
tearsheet, August 1974
4
Carnival (1985)
4
6-7
Handwritten manuscript in three notebooks, 13 November 1983, undated
5
1
“Miscellaneous abandoned typescript and holograph material,” typescript and
handwritten pages, undated
5
2
Typescript and handwritten manuscript “A,” 9 and 28 October 1982, undated.
With typescript note from author on “re-visionary cycles in the composition of
Carnival,” April 1991.
5
3
Corrected bound page proofs, 1985
5
4
“Literacy and the Imagination: A Talk,” photocopy from The Literate Imagination, 1989
5
Companions of the Day and Night
(1975)
5
5-6
Handwritten manuscript in four notebooks, undated, 24 January 1974
5
7
Typescript with handwritten revisions and insert pages, undated
5
8
Final typescript, typesetting copy, undated
6
1
Corrected page proofs, 1974
6
The Four Banks of the River of Space
(1990)
6
2-6
Handwritten manuscript in eleven notebooks, undated
7
1-3*
Typescript and handwritten manuscript, undated. With note from author
regarding drafts, April 1991 (*oversize removed to box 12)
7
4
Corrected final typescript, 6 May 1989
7
5
Corrected page proofs, 1990
7
The Infinite Rehearsal (1987)
7
6-7
Handwritten manuscript, undated
8
1
Typescript and handwritten manuscript, 3 July 1986
8
2
Corrected page proofs, 1987
8
Jonestown (1996)
8
3
Typescript and handwritten manuscript, 24 May 1994, undated
8
4-5
Typescript and handwritten manuscript, with miscellaneous pages, July 1994,
undated
8
6-7
Revised typescript, undated
9
1-2
Photocopy revised typescript with printer’s marks, undated. With photocopy
of typescript “Notes and Queries” regarding manuscript and handwritten answers,
undated
9
3
Corrected page proofs, 1996
9
Literacy and the Imagination: A Talk--see
folder 5.4
9
Resurrection at Sorrow Hill (1993)
9
4-7
“Early stages of composition,” handwritten drafts in ten notebooks,
undated, 15 June 1992
10
1-4
“Miscellaneous drafts,” handwritten and typescript pages, November 1992,
undated. With photocopy letter to Charles H. Rowell of Callaloo, 19 October 1994, and typescript of excerpt
published in Third Text.
10
5
Corrected final typescript, undated, November 1992
10
6
Corrected page proofs, 1993
11
The Sleepers of Roraima (1970)
11
1
“Couvade,” typescript and miscellaneous handwritten pages, undated
11
2
“I, Quiyumucon,” handwritten manuscript in notebook, undated
11
3
“I, Quiyumucon,” corrected typescript, undated
11
4
“Yurokon,” typescript and handwritten manuscript, undated
11
5
Final typescript, undated
11
6
Corrected page proofs, 1970
11
7
Wilson Harris, photocopy essay in Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Volume 16. With
letter from Margaret Wilson to Joseph and Joan [Johanna] Jones, 3 October
1992.
Series II. Reviews, 1960-1990
11
8
Review clippings, 1960-1990, and radio transcript of Palace of the Peacock review by John Connell, 13 October 1960
Series III. Correspondence, 1978-1997
11
9-10
Letters to Michael Thorpe, 1978-1997
12
Oversize Materials
Index of Correspondents
- Callaloo (Charles H. Rowell)--10.4
- Edwards, Paul Geoffrey, 1926-1992--11.9
- Evans Brothers Ltd. (W. Knock)--11.10
- Harris, Margaret Rose-- 11.7, 11.10
- Jones, Joseph Jay, 1908- --11.7
- Jones, Johanna--11.7
- Thorpe, Michael--11.9, 11.10
- Thorpe, Elin--11.10